Flood, a current partner at the firm Williams & Connolly, has represented several top government officials in different administrations, including former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

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He most notably represented Clinton during the impeachment proceedings brought against the former president by the House of Representatives and tried before the Senate.

During Bush's second term, Flood served for two years as the lead lawyer for the White House's counsel office in handling inquiries from congressional investigators.

Flood also represented Cheney in private practice in a civil suit brought against him and several other Bush administration officials by Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative whose identity was leaked and revealed by the press. The incident resulted in a criminal investigation which led to the conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former adviser to Cheney, for lying to federal prosecutors.

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Shannen Coffin, a former counsel to Cheney, said Flood is a pro who could bring some needed structure to Trump's legal team.

“What Emmet brings to the table here that no one has who’s represented the president in this capacity has brought is that he knows what a functional defense of a president looks like — how things look when they are functioning properly,” Coffin said. “What I would say is if Emmet Flood can’t do this, it can’t be done. … This is the move the president should have made some time ago.”

Although Flood previously rejected overtures to join Trump's legal team in March, the White House on Wednesday confirmed that he will now be joining Trump's defense as special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe continues to intensify.

“Emmet Flood will be joining the White House Staff to represent the President and the administration against the Russia witch hunt," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "Ty Cobb, a friend of the President, who has done a terrific job, will be retiring at the end of the month.”

Alan Dershowitz, a retired Harvard law professor who has often defended the president, told POLITICO on Wednesday the addition of Flood likely signaled Trump’s legal team was “preparing for battle” as they looked ahead to the possibility of a subpoena coming from Mueller.

Mueller, according to the Washington Post, indicated to Trump's lawyers during a tense March meeting that he might pursue a subpoena of the president if federal investigators insisted he was obligated to meet with federal prosecutors.

Dershowitz, who dined with the president last month as questions mounted over whether he would dismiss Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, added that the hiring of Flood could also indicate further “posturing” from a president eager to show he has legal might on his side.

Flood could further come in handy if Democrats make a strong showing in the midterms and take control of either the House or Senate – or both.

His high-profile resume includes representing the Bush White House in a series of oversight battles with Congress — a task that grew more intense when the House and Senate fell into Democratic hands in 2006 and as lawmakers began bearing down on issues like warrantless wiretapping and the former president’s dismissal of more than a dozen U.S. attorneys.

“He knows how to advance the interests of the president even in a chaotic situation,” said Coffin, now a partner at Steptoe & Johnson. “You have to say that when we lost control of the House and Senate in 2006 it was sort of the worst nightmare of any administration. He was the point guy on all of that.”

Flood has a reputation for being assertive, and occasionally combative, in his approach.

“He’s a Williams and Connolly lawyer. They’re aggressive…That’s what he was trained in,” Coffin said. “I’ve seen that side of Emmet. It’s not personal. He’s a man who has a passion for what he’s doing.”

A former colleague in the Bush counsel’s office, Scott Coffina, recalls Flood’s key role in dealing with Congress. “The oversight demands were just incredible,” said Coffina, now the chief prosecutor in Burlington County, New Jersey. “He was really at the tip of the spear … I would expect him to fiercely defend his client here but, where he could, to seek accommodations so they don’t have extraneous fights and so they’re arguing over core issues.”

Former House Judiciary Committee counsel Elliot Mincberg, who went toe to toe with Flood as the panel pressed for information on the firing of the U.S. attorneys, doesn’t recall Flood being so accommodating. “He was a very strong, some would say stubborn defender of executive prerogative there. Very smart guy. Very able, but he really was not willing to give an inch in terms of negotiation,” Mincberg said.

“The fact he represented President Clinton will give pause to some Republicans, but there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to draw any inference about that. He was just being a very professional lawyer at a law firm that had the president as a client,” Coffin said.

While Flood is expected primarily to deal with Mueller, some see his hiring as an indication that the White House may be bracing for an impeachment fight down the road.

“I’m sure they have an eye on both,” Coffina said. “This protects them on both flanks….They have to have an eye on impeachment. They’d be foolish not to have an eye on that and Emmet would be a very good guy to deal with that. He’s a good fighter.”

During a 2009 interview of former Bush adviser Karl Rove by the House Judiciary Committee, Flood challenged a question Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) asked about whether Republicans considered voter fraud “a great wedge issue.”

“We are here to talk about facts, and not just any facts, facts relating to the evaluation of decision[s] to dismiss or...replace the former U.S. Attorneys in question,” Flood, who was representing Bush during the proceedings, interjected. “And it seems to me that is the only font of agreed jurisdiction that I think is remotely applicable here. And it seems to me the question whether Mr. Rove or any political consultant or man on the street thinks that voter fraud is a nice wedge issue for elections has got nothing to do with that. And on that basis, sir, I ask you to withdraw the question.”

According to a biography on his law firm’s website, Flood’s experience includes cases dealing with “complex white-collar matters, Congressional investigations, professional liability disputes, and other high-stakes litigation and crisis situations."

Flood graduated magna cum laude in 1978 from the University of Dallas with a bachelor of arts, according to the bio. He went on to get a Master of Arts and a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin and to pursue postdoctoral studies in humanities at Wesleyan University in the 1980s. In 1991, Flood got his J.D. from Yale Law School.